Mike’s working method is long-term.
He visits a place, makes drawings, takes notes and
then lets things ferment.
Later,
sometimes years later, he’ll start to paint. After a while, he’ll recognise the
structures as coming from something he’s already seen and will find the
drawings he did so long before.
The
paintings that appear have a strong feeling of “Sprit of Place” – that feeling
that a site has lived through many layers of human experience and has been laid
down into its fabric: the feeling that we are here in this place now, but many
have passed before us and many will do so after.
Without this sensation, there
is no inspiration for Mike.
Training
Mike trained at Wimbledon and Winchester Schools of Art and has lived and worked in West France since 1989. He paints in oil, gouache and watercolour in various formats.
His work is mainly landscape and is inspired from the New Forest, Devon, Cumbria and Westmoreland, The Atlantic Coast of France and Provence.
